


The Depths

by reasonablywittyatbest



Series: The Lost Statements [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Original Statement, the vast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 01:45:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19367662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reasonablywittyatbest/pseuds/reasonablywittyatbest
Summary: Statement of Jack Miller, regarding an encounter on Lake Superior in his childhood. Statement number 9971202, 12th February, 1997. Basira Hussain recording.Statement Begins.





	The Depths

Statement of Jack Miller, regarding an encounter on Lake Superior in his childhood. Statement number 9971202, 12th February, 1997. Basira Hussain recording.

Statement Begins.

I’m not sure this is the kind of story you lot want, but it’s the story I have to tell. I’ve been sitting on it since I was a child. I’m not really sure what compelled me to tell it now, but I saw a piece about the institute on some website about the paranormal and I knew I wanted to come in and share my story. 

My parents were both American expats, and every summer they would take me and my siblings to visit our family in the states. They had a cabin not too far from Lake Superior, and we would spend as much time as humanly possible out by the lake. Some of my aunts and uncles had boats and those would be the best times. They would haul us kids out behind them in a rubber tube doing their best to send us into the water. I loved it, every minute of it; until I was probably seven or eight. The water stretching out to the horizon, and the deep blue depth were as familiar as my family. The lake had always felt safe, like home to me as a child. 

That was until I found out just how big it really was. 

That year a friend of the family had joined us at the lake. I don’t even know whose friend he was, really. I don’t even remember his face any more. But I remember what he said to me. 

We were waiting for my aunt and uncle to finish getting the boat on the water. I remember it so clearly, he told me: as large as South Carolina! 1,335 feet deep, ‘who in the world knows what could be living down there?’ Sounding for all the world like he was just so proud to have some knowledge to impart to the younger generation, all while stinking of beer. What a terrible thing to say. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

Soon my child’s imagination had populated the entire lake with monsters, and dangers, and all manner of terrible things. When it was my turn on the inner tube I didn’t want to get off of the boat, thoroughly convinced something would grab me and pull me down and down and down, until I would never see the light of day again. I started crying, and no matter how much my family tried to convince me I wouldn’t get on the inner tube. I didn’t even want to be on the boat anymore, spending my time on the shore reluctantly playing in the surf with the younger cousins. I even had nightmares. 

My parents soon got fed up with it, done trying to gently coax me back onto the lake. Wishing to soothe their irritation I reluctantly went out on the boat again. I was soon talked into being pulled behind the boat on the inner tube as well. All the time, I could just… feel the vastness below us; that deep, dark unknown, waiting for unsuspecting prey. But I dutifully got into the inner tube. I actually had fun again, for awhile; until it got so rough I was finally flung from the tube and into the open water. 

I hit the water pretty hard, it knocked the wind out of me with a loud thwap and I sunk like a stone. I struggled to get my bearings. I tried kicking out to propel myself to the surface but it didn’t seem to work, I couldn’t seem to find it. I twisted around and around looking for a hint of light filtering through the water. But there was nothing. It was dark in all directions. And I was sinking, sinking deeper and deeper into the dark. I struggled as I sank, desperate for air. I might well have been struggling against the hand of god for all the good it did. 

And as I started to sink I felt something behind me; something with a different… density than the water around me, something big. The first hint was all the hair on the back of my neck standing on end, even in the water. That creeping feeling, absolute certainty something is right behind you. A shiver shooting down my spine as the temperature of the water around me dropped. As I writhed and struggled in the dark it crept ever closer until I knew it was inches away from touching me, my skin tingling in anticipation of it. 

I was dying, I knew I was dying, and I wasn’t going to find the surface. There was only one option, my oxygen deprived brain soon concluded. I had to turn around and look at whatever was behind me.

I regret it. I should have let myself die there, rather than having to live all this time with the knowledge I have.

I turned slowly, edging on unconsciousness. It wasn’t just big. It was everything. It stretched out on all sides into everything and nothing. Its vastness stretched out on either side of me as if to embrace me, pull me into it. Yet it had no idea I was even there, so insignificant and small I was. Right before the impossible nothing everything enveloped me I finally opened my mouth and started to scream, and scream, bubbles streaming out of my mouth in no particular direction.

I was still screaming when they pulled me out of the water. Still screaming in between desperate gasps for air and coughing as I lay on the dry deck dripping dark pools of water. It took ages and ages for me to calm down. I tried to tell them but they all brushed it off. According to them I had simply blacked out when I hit the water the wrong way and it was just some sort of trippy near death experience.

But I can assure you it was no such thing. Whatever I encountered that day was real. I have had to live with the knowledge that our universe holds thing so incredibly large that there is no way our existence can even matter since I was so young. I never went back, the next year I begged and pleaded until my parents agreed to let me stay with friends of mine rather than go back to the lake, but I know its still down there, waiting for someone. Waiting for Me. 

Statement ends.

.  
.  
.

Ugh, I don’t know why I bothered to do this. It still feels terrible. It didn’t make anything better. I… Stupid tape recorder, who’s even listening now.

Fine. 

You know, it wasn’t too bad here. Before. Even if I was a prisoner and had a literally evil boss. Everything was in motion, we were working towards something. Now it’s like everything’s stopped, at the worst point in time. Tim is dead, Daisy is… gone. Melanie’s losing it, Martin is off doing what ever and Johns in a coma. And we’re… under attack. Not yet, but it’s coming. I just hope we’re ready when it happens. 

Happy now? I hope it’s satisfying.


End file.
